Fade Street – Making The Hills look like a Mensa meeting

By Alannah McMahon | December 14, 2010.

Cici, Vogue, Louise and Dani (Photo courtesy of screenscene.ie)

In 2006, a new type of reality show was broadcast by MTV. It followed the lives of a few wealthy young adults living in Los Angeles, California. Despite being as entertaining and mentally stimulating as a window covered in condensation on a mildly foggy day, The Hills was a surprise hit.

Presumably, the show’s success lay in the audience’s fascination of how there were people in the world who are this stupid, and gave other countries, such as Ireland, a chance to privately gloat and feel smug knowing that at least in our country this sort of thing wasn’t acceptable.

On 16 November 2010, RTE proved them wrong.

RTE have done some wonderful things for this country since 1961. It’s given the public of Ireland an identity in the media and provided us with a good balance of entertaining and informative broadcasting, enriching our culture and educating our people.

But none of that matters anymore. All good was erased when our very own version of The Hills, Fade St, was aired for the first time.

Fade St follows the lives of several young adults living on Fade St, Dublin 2 and their daily struggle to survive with as little personality and intelligence as humanly possible.

The show stars Lauren Johnston, Dani Robinson, Cici Cavanagh, Vogue Wilson and a few other painfully “cool” clones searching for their “big break”.

Despite having the combined IQ of a school child who just did 12 rounds with Mike Tyson, each character (I mean, totally real life individual, because this show is not scripted at all) has her own endearing personality trait that really makes them relatable.

Take Louise Johnston, she looks like Lauren Conrad’s older brother, so fansof The Hills can feel at home watching her work her way up from her internship at fashion magazine Stellar, which she totally got on her own merit of course. And after that interview with Editor Susan Vasquez, who could blame her. Congratulations, Louise. And Susan. Who says originality is dead?

Similarly, Dani Robinson is from Wexford but moved up to Dublin to start a short-lived internship at MCD Productions. The fact that Dani now lives in Dublin is obviously the defining aspect of her personality. She can be the favourite for all fans in Dublin who have also moved to the capital from elsewhere; they understand what she’s going through.

DIT student Cici Cavanagh comes across at first as the bitchy trouble-stirrer of the show throwing a strop when she can’t get into Oxegen for free, but time will tell, and hey, characters and personalities can change as often as their bad hairstyles. Nice one, Cici.

And then there’s Vogue Wilson. If you thought Jonathon Rhys Myers wore a lot of make up in The Tudors, then his performance in this will come as quite a shock. It really does give him an opportunity to showcase his acting abilities, and modelling skills. He plays an almost convincing woman.

I didn’t think it was possible to find a show to make me miss The Hills. At least Fade St can be attributed with proving there are more terrible things in life than Heidi Pratt’s surgically enhanced everything and Audrina Patridge’s lazy eyes.

I would like to applaud RTE on their cunning plan to wipe out the real life Ross O’Carroll Kelly’s in the country. Giving out their addresses and places of work certainly makes the process a lot easier.